Box CEO Aaron Levie to judge €500k PITCH competition for start-ups

The €500,000 search for the world’s best start-up that will take place at the Dublin Web Summit in October will be judged by cloud computing entrepreneur Aaron Levie, the 27-year-old founder and CEO of Box.

Levie’s company Box, which began as a college project, provides cloud services to businesses and enterprises and is used by 92pc of Fortune 500 companies.

Privately-held Box is backed by some of the top names in venture capital, including Andreessen Horowitz and Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and strategic investors include Salesforce.com, P&G, McAfee and SAP.

More than 100 start-ups will pitch in front of Levie and other judges, including the co-founder of Skype Niklas Zennström, Palintir Technologies’ Joe Lonsdale, Google Ventures’ Kevin Rose, Evernote board member Esther Dyson and renowned blogger Robert Scoble.

This year’s line-up at the Dublin Web Summit on 30 and 31 October will include WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg and the founder of Hailo Jay Bregman.

“The summit will be the largest business event in Ireland this year, bringing more than 5,000 business tourists to Dublin,” said Paddy Cosgrave, Dublin Web Summit founder and CEO.